James Ponsoldt directs Emma Watson, Tom Hanks and Karen Gillan in the techno thriller about a social media app that begins to dominate one of its latest employee’s life. 

James Ponsoldt is becoming one of the key cinematic documenters of the 21st century experience. Though The Circle is his most prescient work yet it fails to reach the uncommonly high emotional intelligence of Smashed, The Spectacular Now or The End of the Tour. Yet his depiction of modern working environments, insidious apps and a generation of sharers and commenters is… pretty fucking accurate, a few accentuations aside. Shame that it never really reaches for a gripping third act and that Watson is again insipid in a role that lacks agency or consistency. Though maybe that weak willed, vacuous flip flopping protagonist is the harshest satirical blow landed.  If so, that’s a damning indictment on millennials. A film that captures its moment in time perfectly, without doing anything particularly entertaining with that accuracy.

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